“A compliment from the Kaiser to the ingenuity of Yankee inventors, I’d call it,” said Billy; “but all the same I don’t feel like throwing up my hands and letting them raid our shop here. It’s a good thing we made that discovery, thanks to Pudge and his sharp eyes.”
“Yes, and that you thought to use the wire, which showed us how somebody had been meddling so as to cut us off from the city,” Frank remarked.
“What if they come in force, knowing we’re here, Frank?”
“That door would not be able to stand much of an attack if they carried axes along with them, I’m afraid,” Billy was told.
“My stars! do you think they’d be apt to do that sort of thing?” demanded the astonished assistant, as he looked around for some sort of weapon with which he might defend the passage of the doorway, should it come to a question of fighting.
“If they want this plane as badly as we think they do,” said Frank, “there is little that desperate men might attempt that they would not try.”
“And still there’s no sign of poor Pudge!” ventured Billy, putting considerable emphasis on the adjective, as though he could almost imagine the happy-go-lucky Pudge lying on his back somewhere along the road, groaning in pain after having been struck down by a cowardly blow.
“I’m sorry to agree with you,” Frank admitted slowly, “but at the worst we’ll hope they’re only detaining our chum, and that he hasn’t been hurt.”
“How about my slipping out and trying to go for help, Frank? If they only knew at Headquarters about this, they would send a whole regiment of British Tommies on the run to patrol our works here. Say the word and I’m off.”
Frank, however, shook his head as though the idea did not appeal to him.